


Fire and fury

by thewintercourt



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 03:00:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7024771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewintercourt/pseuds/thewintercourt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She spread her arms and screamed a sound like the cry of a bird of prey. Something within her unfurled great, fiery wings as it opened its eyes for the first time in centuries, and locked its gaze on the little man before it.<br/>A fictionalisation of the climax of X-Men: Apocalypse. Major spoilers ahead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire and fury

The world, for just a moment, ceased to turn. Nobody would ever notice; Erik had torn all of the iron and the ore from the buildings and bridges, cars and streetlights, from the bowels of the earth itself, and the sheer devastation was more than enough distraction.  
But the earth stood still, stopped its rotation, and for the briefest instant it was under the complete and utter command of one little girl and the great, roiling thing that burned within her.  
Jean Grey had doubted herself. She had doubted her abilities, and her capacity to control them. It had taken a certain kind of encouragement; Charles was the only person in all of the cosmos that could have convinced her that she was talented enough, that she was powerful enough to make a difference, and she had indeed made a difference.  
She stepped from the ruin of what had once been someone's home, stepped into the blistering, burning air before her and confronted the Apocalypse, the great idol that threatened everything. He was unfathomably old. His very presence was enough to strike fear and panic into the hearts of men, to twist the fabric of creation, to set the air ablaze. He was unstoppable, unimaginable, relentless, ruthless. He was pure evil. He was pure power.  
Jean had never been so afraid, so utterly hopeless as in that moment. She stepped forward.  
Apocalypse regarded the girl with an indifferent glance. Lightning split the very skies as his lieutenant cast her might at him. Pure concussive force barraged him from one side. Shards of metal rained down from the other side, thrown by the man who had torn apart the world, and it turned to dust before it could touch the tyrant. Peter lay broken, Hank lay unconscious, Charles lay crippled and dying. Apocalypse regarded Jean, and in her he saw nothing. Hope was slim, but it was not lost.  
She stepped forward.  
"Let go," whispered the Professor. "Jean, let go!"  
She spread her arms, and the world stopped. Something within her unfurled, an impossible force that had lain dormant, older and stranger than time and space, more powerful than anything that had ever been imagined in the minds of men. Something within her opened its eyes, flexed its wings, a creature of fire and fury given form. It turned its ancient gaze to the old man before it. The old man met the gaze of the entity, and he was- for the first time in centuries- afraid.  
Jean Grey spread her arms, flames licking at her flesh, wings unfurling about her like a great archangel of God, turning its rage upon this false idol. The earth went still.  
For a moment, there was peace. Power begets comfort, a sense of safety. Jean had never felt safe before, but in this moment she knew without question that there was not a force upon earth that could harm her.  
For a moment, there was peace.  
Then there was pain.  
She screamed. She opened her mouth and a sound came out like the screeching of a great bird of prey, something primal and powerful and agonized. She screamed from the pain, from the anger and hurt, from the sorrows and sadness, from the pure thrill of it all, and the air caught fire.  
Apocalypse grew still, his defenses dropped, his knowledge and experience spent before this great force. Ancient armor was torn from his body, impossible technologies ripped from him like leaves in a breeze, like they were nothing. His armor turned to dust around him, ripped apart at a molecular level. A girder pierced his side. Lightning and light struck true, at last.  
He murmured something, but Jean did not hear it. She was not even sure it was english. She did not care, and nor did the fire within her.  
She watched as she tore apart the great, fallen king. She watched as he wailed, as he was reduced from a king, a tyrant, a god, into a wailing child, a pathetic little man, more skin and bone than anything else. She watched his milk-white eyes close and his lips part as he wailed still. She watched the flesh around his mouth burn away. She watched the flesh around his temples, at his throat and his chest, at his wrists and thighs as it was all stripped from him.  
His voice rose, higher, shriller, louder, increasingly agonised as he was torn apart, atom by atom, as his legacy was reduced to dust. There was a brief moment when he continued to scream after the flesh was ripped from him, and he was muscle and bone, all pink and pathetic.  
To think, this had been the bane of all the world a moment ago. Now he was flayed and burning, screeching an awful noise that Jean knew intrinsically that she would not be able to remember, for it was so awful to hear. Then he grew still, he grew limp and silent, propped up like meat, pierced through with horrible hunks of steel.  
Still, he must have lived somehow. The air around him rippled, grew opaque and violet. He would flee, he would heal, and he would strike again.  
Jean pressed harder, pushed herself further, forced the roiling thing within her to burn brighter.  
The flayed man stirred as the muscle was burned from him, bones glistening white and bloodless, and then there was nothing.  
The air grew still. The force within the little girl grew placid and satisfied. It curled up its wings of fire and fury and it returned to sleep.  
The agony passed. The rage settled. The power trickled away again.  
The earth continued to turn, and nobody would ever know that a little girl and the thing within her had ever stilled it.


End file.
